


In Ten Years Time

by Daerrii



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Depression, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post DoFP, Self-Harm, attempt at happyish ending, charles' bad emotional condition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 13:51:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1690601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daerrii/pseuds/Daerrii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>10 years is a long time to spent apart.</p><p>Five times Charles had Erik on his mind and one time that Erik let Charles into his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Ten Years Time

**Author's Note:**

> So I wanted to write something happy but this happened instead. I did try to make the ending slightly happier while still following what happened in the movie. 
> 
> Obviously, contains spoilers for the movie.

1

Most of his time spent after leaving that beach on Cuba was in a hospital. It was getting use to being in a wheelchair and finding new ways to go around his own house. It was focusing on Hank, Alex, and Sean, and making sure they were alright.

Occasionally, a stray memory would invade his thoughts. He’ll picture Raven eating breakfast at the kitchen table or be reminded of Erik running laps out in the grounds when he wheels past a window on a clear day. Charles keeps himself busy, because the less idle he stays the easier it is to bury away the things he doesn’t want to think about. So Charles throws himself into the paperwork for the school, into getting the mansion ready, and training the boys. It’s tiring but at least he doesn’t have time to linger on the what could have beens, and it works, until a few weeks before opening the school.

“We should start clearing out the rooms.” Hank says one night after dinner. Charles looks up from where he was sitting behind his desk in his study.

“For the students? I was thinking we can clear out the upper north wing, it’s close to the main area so we can keep an eye on them.”

“Yeah alright, but I also mean we should think about cleaning up the rooms. You know, Raven’s.” Hank hesitates for a moment before adding, “and Erik’s.”

“The room...but Hank.” Charles spent so much time trying not to think too much about what they were doing, he forgot that their rooms were still there and uncleared. The idea of cleaning out their rooms bring back an old familiar ache inside him. A part of him wants to protest not to, just in case. Hank must see it on his face as well, because he opens his mouth no doubt to remind Charles that it is highly unlikely Raven and Erik will come back anytime soon. “Yes alright,” Charles cuts in before Hank can say anything.

“I can do it,” Hank offers, watching Charles closely. Charles knows that Hank worries about him, the boys all do. He feels a stab of guilt at that, he wasn’t the only one who lost things on the beach that day, it must be difficult for them as well, working to pick up the slack after Erik and Raven left. He also wasn’t the only one who lost someone special he reminds himself, thinking of Hank and Raven.

“No I’ll go look through the rooms later, we can clean it up tomorrow but we should leave most things as it is.”

Hank hesitates for a moment but nods and walks out of the office.

Later that night, Charles wheels himself towards Erik’s room down the hall from his and stares at the closed door. He hadn’t gone into this room much when Erik was still here. They usually played chess in the study or occasionally in Charles’ room if it was late.

He pushes open the door and slowly wheels inside, looking around the room as he does. The bed is neat and there are a few coins and metal paper clips on the dresser. He goes past them and heads for the closet on the other side of the bed, feeling the weight that he’s been trying so hard to ignore settle heavily in his chest. Erik never came back to take his things, but he hadn’t had that much to begin with so there was not much left over anyways. Charles takes a few deep breaths as he looks through the closet. A pair of pants, a leather jacket, some shirts, and the turtleneck.

The room still smells like Erik he notes, of leather and smoke. Erik always carried himself as something vicious and dangerous but Charles saw more. Beneath the leather and the smoke, there was always warmth as well. The kind of warmth that can burn you if you get too close but also keeps you safe on cold nights.  
Charles scoffs to himself.  
Erik would find him ridiculous right now, he was never one found of sentiment.

It’s almost strange touching Erik’s clothes. Even the leather jacket is worn and soft with age, they feel almost normal, like the owner is going to come back anytime now and wear them again. It isn’t until the metal clothes hanger starts tapping against the hook that Charles realize the hand he has on the sleeve of the jacket is shaking. He pulls back as if burned and slams the closet door closed.

The ache in his chest gets stronger, starts beating faster, and he finds himself pulling in breaths like he’s drowning. Charles turns in his chair and quickly wheels himself out of the room, knuckles turning white from how tightly he’s gripping the control. It isn’t until he gets back to his own room and closes the door that his shaking begins to stop. He lowers his head into his hands, revelling in the pain as he pulls on his hair and gasps into the space between his arms.

The next day he avoids Hanks questioning looks and attempts to bring up cleaning the rooms. The doors stays closed after that.

2

The school starts off pretty well. They still lack teachers but he and Hank takes up most of the classes with Alex and Sean helping where they can. They only start with a handful of students which makes things easier.

“We should have a language class.”

Charles puts down the newspaper and smiles at Eddie, one of the younger students, sitting next to him at the kitchen table. “Is that something you’re interested in?”

Eddie stirs around his cereal and shrugs, “Hisako knows japanese, I only know english, it seem cool knowing a bunch of languages.”

They hadn’t really thought about language classes, mostly because none of them knew enough of another language to properly teach it.

“I have a cousin who learnt Russian,” Eddie continues, “that was cool cause I never heard anyone speak it before, I haven’t met too many people who knew other languages though.”

Charles feels his smile strain a bit but nods, “I use to know someone who spoke over five languages.”

Eddie give him a wide eyed look, “can they come and teach at the school then?”

Charles forces his smile to stay on and shakes his head softly, “no I’m afraid not, they’re very busy somewhere far away.”

His nightly chess games with Erik didn’t just include philosophical musings or moral debates, Charles usually took advantage of the private time with just the two of them to get Erik to open up more about himself.

_“Please Charles, never do that again.” Erik was trying to sound exasperated but the quirk of his mouth gave him away._

_Charles gave him an affronted look, “I think I sound quite well for someone who never even took a German class in my life.”_

_Erik shaked his head but he was still smiling. Charles opened his mouth, attempting the sentence Erik taught him. But before he made a sound, Erik reached across the chess board and covered Charles’ mouth with his hand._

_“Really Charles, there are some thing you just aren’t good at.”_

_Charles would have a retort but all he could think about in that moment was the feeling of Erik’s calloused fingers against his lips and wondering if Erik can hear his heart drumming inside him. They sat like that for a second longer before Erik slowly retracted his hand but his eyes never left Charles’. Charles tried to force his blush back down and before he could reply, Erik chuckled and looked back down at the board._

_“Sie sind liebenswert.”_

_“What did that mean?”_

_“I’m just complaining about how utterly ridiculous you are.”_

“...and she has all those books with the cool writing.”

Charles snaps out of his daze and finds his hand had crumpled the newspaper page. He forces himself to relax and smiles back at Eddie.

“Well maybe we’ll find a teacher who can teach different languages.”

Eddie smiles at him before going back to his bowl, “that’ll be cool.”

3

Alex was the last to leave.

When the war began, most of the older students got drafted while the younger ones got taken home by their parents who were worried about what would happen. Sean left after the school closes, wanting to see his family again in case he gets his letter. Three weeks later Alex gets drafted and then its just him and Hank.

The dreams start coming again about a month in.  
The gunshot, the sudden rush of pain, the feeling of sand underneath his hands as he falls. Every time, he wakes up with his heart beating against his bones, his hands clutching his legs. One morning he pulled back the covers and scratched at the skin until it started to bleed.  
He never felt anything.

“I’m going out into the grounds for a while, its a nice day, you want to come?” Hank asks him after helping him patch up.

“No you go ahead.”

Hank stands in the doorway to the study and doesn’t leave, eyeing the drink next to Charles and frowns, looking both worried and disapproving at once. Charles knows that Hank doesn’t like the drinking. But it’s the only thing that can control the weight he feels in his chest anytime he allows himself to feel.

“Hank go, I’ll be fine.”

Hank makes a gesture like he wants to say something but thinks again at the last minute. He nods and leaves the study, closing the door behind him.

Charles pours himself another glass and stares at the chess set sitting in the middle of the room between the two chairs. The chairs where he and Erik use to sit almost every night, but he suppose those days are long gone.

Like your legs, a dark part of his mind supplies, gone because of Erik.

He takes a large drink of his cup, the alcohol washing the storm of panic coming up into anger. Erik never came back for his things and yet he still managed to take everything away. Charles’ breathing speeds up as he feels his rage flow through his chest, down his fingertips. He hurls the cup onto the floor, glass shattering everywhere. He wheels himself closer to the chess set, bits of glass crunching under his wheels, and being reminded of the presence of the wheelchair only makes him angrier.

Erik took it all away, the dark voice in his head whispers, and now you can’t even walk. He sweeps his arms across the board, chess pieces rolling onto the floor, and screams into the empty room. He yells until his lungs ache, until all he has left is breathless sobs.

Hank finds him later, laying down on the sofa across the room, eyes red and staring at the ceiling. He cleans up the glass and helps Charles back into his chair before picking up the chess pieces.

“Put them back on the table,” Charles says when Hank starts looking for the chess case.

When Hank leaves to make dinner, Charles goes over to the table and slowly rearranges the pieces back into their positions.

4

“Did you get any sleep last night?” Hanks asks him one morning when he finds Charles sitting in the kitchen picking at a piece of toast. Charles doesn’t reply but he feels like the dark circles underneath his eyes says enough.  
“Is it the voices again?”

Charles takes a deep breath and nods.  
His powers have started slipping, or maybe he just couldn’t handle it anymore. Where the thoughts of other people use to be a comfortable presence at the back of his mind, now just makes him want to claw through his brain just to get them to stop. Every single day, the stray thoughts of people outside the mansion grounds slips in and Charles doesn’t know how he ever got use to this before because he feels like his head might explode.

“Maybe we should find out what Erik’s helmet is made of, get one ourselves and maybe I won’t have to listen to this goddamn chatter anymore.”

“Charles.”

“I hated that thing so much when he wore it,” Charles continues, “now I hope I never have to feel him again.”

Hank stays quiet but pulls out the chair next to him and sits down. This is probably the first time Charles really mentioned Erik with Hank. But he’s so tired and he’s tired of being tired, he just wants it all to stop. The voices, the pain, the unbearable tightness in his chest that feels like he’s being crushed.

The voices has never gotten this bad before, not even when he was in large cities and it became difficult to shield from everyone. That happened once when he and Erik were out recruiting. The voices had become too loud one night, but at the time he used Erik’s mind as a anchor. Erik’s minds which he use to think of as so beautiful and bright, Erik’s mind which tethered him down and saved him from being crushed by the onslaught of voices. The memory now makes him nauseous. The thought that he was once welcomed in Erik’s head, that Erik’s mind was once something that brought him joy.  
He hated it now.

“I’ve been working on something,” Hanks says finally. “I made something to help control my mutation, just enough so I can look normal from time to time, so I can go out into town and do stuff. I think maybe it can help you too.”

Charles looks at him surprised, though he figures he hasn't been paying too much attention to Hank these past few months.

“I’ve been experimenting around with it,” Hank adds. “I think it might be able to help with your legs as well, though we’d need to do some test before we know for sure.”

Charles stare at him, quiet Hank who took care of everything after the school close, who continues to take of everything but still managed to find the time to try and help him feel better. He reaches up slowly and squeezes Hank on the shoulder, “I...Hank, thank you.”

“Well we don’t know for sure yet,” Hank says, but gives a real smile that Charles doesn’t remember seeing in ages. And for the first time in a really long time, he begins to feel something close to relieved.

5

Hank goes down into his lab to work on his machines after they find Logan’s contact in the phonebook. Logan makes himself at home in Charles study, quietly drinking his supply of scotch while Charles sits at his desk, mind still going over everything that happened, that’s going to happen. There’s one point he keeps coming back to.

“You said Erik and I are together in the future.”

Logan nods, “war tends to bring people together.”

But what about before that, Charles wonders.

_“The professor I know will never turn his back to someone who lost their path, especially someone he loved.”_

Logan had said that but how much did he really know, what is the relationship between him and Erik exactly in the future. Logan must sense his unease because he sighs before setting his glass down.

“Look, I won’t lie. Magneto was a pretty huge asshole and I’m assuming he still is, he did a lot of horrible things and I hated the guy for a pretty long time but you and him, he cared about you in his own fucked up kind of way. If that’s what you’re wondering.”

Charles wasn’t sure how that made him feel, the anger and hate that's been brewing inside him for all these years was still there, but there was also a longing. Logan said they were on the same team in the future, fighting side by side. He didn’t know when that day would come if they fix the future, and he doesn’t dare let himself hope for it.

“I know you two have a pretty messed up thing going on right now, but I’m not here to play relationship counselor,” Logan says staring at him from across the room, “if we succeed and break him out, I’m going to need you guys to keep your personal problems at bay at least during the mission.”

Charles glares at him, “then I guess you’ll be happy to know that I have no regard for him whatsoever that may get in the way of our plan.”

Logan rolls his eyes but puts down the drink and walks over to the door, “yeah I’ll believe it when I see it, get some rest, we have a long day tomorrow.”

Charles stares at closed door after Logan leaves.  
You don’t believe it either, his mind tells himself. While at the beginning, he entertained fantasies of what he would do, what he would say if he ever got to see Erik again. Over the years, the possibilities of that happening became smaller and smaller until he stopped thinking about it all together, until now.

He wants to believe, wants to believe so badly, that seeing Erik again won’t affect him, that what he said to Logan is true. He wants to believe that he is no longer the young man he use to be who cared so much about Erik’s attention, his affection. Stop it, he tells himself, as memories of warm afternoons spent sitting out in the grass flood into him and he feels his heart constrict in way he hasn’t felt in a long time.

He rests his head on the table, feeling the cool surface against his skin, he is going to see Erik tomorrow, after ten years spent apart. Charles tells himself that Erik doesn’t affect him like that anymore, that any previous feeling he may have had left along with everything else on the beach that day.  
He repeats it to himself over and over until he believes it.

+1

Erik has a small safe house in DC. He tries to have a few in most states, for convenience. It’s not much and there’s a chance they might track him back here, but he isn’t planning on staying in DC anyways. Just stop for a moment, enough to figure out where to go next. He thinks of Charles as he looks around the empty room with helmet still in his hands, Charles with blood flowing from his head, leaning on Hank and looking at over at him with a sea of emotions in his eyes, and Erik finds himself wishing they had more time.

The surprise of seeing Charles again, together with the anger and hate that Charles threw at him during the little time they had together, had made Erik jump to his usual defense of anger. The memories of Charles no where to be found, when so many of their own were being killed and tortured had taken hold of him on the plane and while he doesn’t necessarily regret the argument they had, he does wish they could have had more time to talk like before as well.  
The chess game had been a start.

But things did not go as planned, they never did, and for a second time, he had nearly gotten Charles killed. Erik buries down the guilt that comes with that memory, of seeing Hank help Charles up from where he was trapped on the ground because of Erik, and Erik never even knew Charles was there.

This was all just another reminder of how dangerous it could be if Erik was with them, how dangerous it would be if the government was able to link his whereabouts to Charles and the school. But as Erik walks around the room, looking through anything they might have left here from previous stays, he wonders where they are right now. If Charles and Hank are on their way back to New York already or if they’re still here in DC.  
Erik stares at the helmet still in his hand and lets himself have this one last time. He takes a deep breath and opens his mind before he can think twice.

_Charles_

It’s quiet for a moment, and he’s beginning to accept it before a sharp spark hits into his mind.

_Erik?_

Along with the message is a bundle of emotions _surprise anger worry_.

Erik wills himself to take a deep breath before continuing. _You and Hank are leaving I presume._

_We’re still in DC for the moment, but we’re going back tonight._

With every response, Erik can feel the tension leaking over from Charles.

_You’re going far away as well my friend?_

Erik sends back an affirmative and they lapse into silence for a moment. But Erik can still feel where they are connected, there are sparks of desperation and longing slipping into his mind, which he doesn’t think Charles meant to send over. But He guesses that Charles is still working to control his powers after going without them for so long.

_It was good to see you again Charles, I’ve missed you._

Erik had never realized how true that was until he saw Charles again after ten long years, only to have to be separated again so soon afterwards.

He receives another bundle of emotions through the link, some Charles meant to sent and some he probably doesn’t. Erik reels a little under the weight of all the sharp anger, the pain, the unbearable sadness of their time together slipping through their fingers again, but underneath all that is something else as well. A small burst of warmth struggling to make itself known.  
 _Love_.

Erik takes in a ragged breath and feels a prickling pain of longing that he hasn’t felt in over ten years. A kind of longing he hadn’t even known he could feel until that cold night when a ridiculous man jumped into the ocean for him all those years ago.

_It doesn’t have to end this way Erik_

Erik shakes his head even though Charles can’t see him, he can’t let himself think like that.

_It’s dangerous Charles, for everyone._

_I know, but maybe, one day._

The tension that Charles had been sending over has slowly been giving way to a small burst of hope, and Erik can feel Charles tamper it down. He can almost laugh at how foolish they’re both being right now, both trying not to hope for something they both want.

Erik goes through his own mind and bundles together what he wants Charles to feel. He takes his own small spark of warmth thats been buried under all the cold metal defenses inside him, he takes the cautious happiness he allowed himself to feel during the days he spent at the mansion, and the unfamiliar want that beated against his chest every time he looked at Charles from across the chessboard. He ties them all up with his need to fight for his cause but also adds in his own small reach of hope and sends it back through the link to Charles, hoping its enough for him to understand, Erik was never good with words anyways.

Erik doesn’t wait for Charles to respond, and forces himself to put on the helmet before it can become too difficult. The weight that use to be comforting is now an tense pressure throughout his entire body. He holds onto Charles’ words.

_Maybe one day._

Before, Logan had said that they were together in the future. Erik doesn’t know when that will happen, in one year, or ten, or twenty. But as foolish as this is, Erik’s going to let himself have this for now and he tucks the hope inside him.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun fact: I almost made myself cry a bunch of times when writing this because I kept thinking about how much they meant to each other in First Class, finding each other again after ten years only having to separate again under not the best circumstances  
> ;____;
> 
> EDIT: upon watching the movie again, I realized that Erik does not actually take the helmet with him when he leaves in the end, which makes me really happy because it might mean he doesn't think he needs it anymore  
> BUT, it also means the ending to this doesn't match up with the movie anymore, so for the sake of making sense, I'm going to pretend that he takes it with him or gets another one >


End file.
